Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright coined the phrase, “The first casualty in war is truth.” The same is true of water wars. In an attempt to justify unlimited groundwater pumping from the Jasper aquifer, a headline in a Montgomery County online newspaper trumpeted, “University Of Houston Study Shows No Linkage Between Deep Groundwater Production And Subsidence In Montgomery County.” But wait! Is that what the study really said? The article did not provide a link to the actual study. So how could you tell if the review was accurate? It’s not. Below are just a few of the reasons why.
Contradictions Between Study and Newspaper’s Summary
The UH study didn’t study Montgomery County. It looked only at Harris-Galveston Subsidence District Regulatory Areas 1 and 2. They cover only SOUTHERN Harris and Galveston counties! Researchers found no subsidence associated with the Jasper there. That’s because virtually no one pumps the Jasper there (See Jasper well location map below). The article’s anonymous author forgot to mention that though.
“Don’t Extrapolate Results,” But They Did
The UH study also carefully cautions readers not to extrapolate the results from the study area to other areas. But the newspaper did it and forgot to mention the caution also.
Newspaper Falsely Claims Study Suggests “No Subsidence”
The newspaper author claimed that the study “suggests that Montgomery County utilities, municipalities, homeowner’s associations, and other large-scale groundwater users could draw water production from the Jasper aquifer without causing any subsidence at the surface of Montgomery County.” The UH study makes no such suggestion.
Claimed “No Need for Regulation,” Contrary to UH Findings
The newspaper author goes on to claim that the study “also suggests that, as long as groundwater production comes from the Jasper or lower formations (such as the Upper Catahoula Formation), there is little need, if any, for any groundwater regulation whatsoever.” Again, the UH study makes no such suggestion.
Quite the contrary, the UH study says that regulation was effective in slowing the subsidence found in other aquifers along the gulf coast that were being depleted, such as the Evangeline and Chicot.
Newspaper Claim of 100% Annual Recharge Not Substantiated by Study
The newspaper author also says that, “Since the quantity of groundwater in Montgomery County is essentially unlimited, and since Montgomery County aquifers enjoy almost 100% recharge annually after production drawdowns have occurred, there would seem to be no reason whatsoever to regulate groundwater production from the Jasper aquifer and the Catahoula aquifer.” The study makes no mention of recharge rates in either of those aquifers.
Newspaper Implies “No Need for Regulation” but Study Says It Helped
Finally, the anonymous newspaper author concludes by saying, “The University of Houston study suggests that it’s time for the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District to bring the entire over-regulation of groundwater to a crashing halt.” The study made no such recommendation.
Inferring that the UH scientists even implied that would require turning the the study’s findings on their head. Quite the contrary. The study explicitly states that regulations implemented in 1975 with the formation of the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District slowed out-of-control subsidence.
Newspaper Article Not Signed
Jumpin’ Jasper! What’s going on here? Who wrote this unsigned article? Was it someone who stands to profit financially from pumping the Jasper dry?
Why Water Not Pumped From Southern Part of Jasper
For the record, the Jasper dips toward the coast along a roughly north-to-south axis. The Jasper aquifer contains fresh water in Montgomery County and northern Harris County. But south of that, it becomes brackish. The water is too salty to use. That’s a big reason why virtually no one pumps it in the southern part of the region.
This map shows the freshwater limits of the Jasper aquifer in 2010. For the most part, the freshwater portion of the Jasper aquifer does not extend to the area of interest studied by the UH scholars.
The down-dip part of the Jasper toward the coast also goes very deep. At the southern limit of freshwater, depth ranges to thousands of feet in places (see bottom of colored area below). Why would you drill that deep if you could get fresher water from aquifers like the Chicot and Evangeline much closer to the surface?
Subsidence Already Noted in Northern Part of Jasper
Those are the reasons why the UH scholars do not associate subsidence with the Jasper in southern Harris and Montgomery Counties. That does NOT mean subsidence won’t happen in other areas where utilities DO pump the Jasper. It already has.
However, USGS well-water height readings north of Highway 99 show severe drawdown near the population centers in southern Montgomery and northern Harris Counties. And surprise, surprise! That also happens to be the area where most subsidence has occurred in Montgomery County.
Unsustainable Pumping Rates
While the advocates of unlimited groundwater pumping want you to believe that the aquifer recharge rates in Montgomery County equal the drawdown rate, they don’t. The Jasper aquifer is being drawn down in populated places at more than 10 FEET per year (see graph below). But USGS estimates that the recharge rate for the Jasper is as little as ONE-TENTH of an INCH per year. That means some utilities have been using up Jasper water 1200 times faster than nature replaces it.
This well drilled in the Jasper aquifer near the Woodlands showed an average decline of approximately 10 feet per year (about 180 feet in 18 years).
Ground level declines produce fault movement and subsidence. They translate to infrastructure damage and flooding.
As water levels decline, water wells begin to have problems producing. They lose “yield,” which means they can’t produce as much water in a given time period. This requires the wells to run longer to meet demand. It costs more to lift water. Longer run times increase maintenance costs. Pumps have to be lowered. The motors have to be upsized, which requires electrical rewiring.
Some well pumps can’t be lowered any farther, which may mean abandoning and replacing the well. Some water level decline is expected. But those who argue that Montgomery County has an unlimited supply of water are just ludicrous. The harder you pump, the more decline you get, and with that comes all the consequences of declines.
Why People Want to Believe the Unbelievable
Montgomery County residents have found the change from well to surface water financially difficult. People WANT to believe that unlimited groundwater pumping is safe. I just hope they don’t wind up putting all their water lillies in one pond, so to speak.
Selective Perception Amplified by Selective Deception
Selective perception is a well known cognitive bias. It describes the process by which people perceive what they want to in media messages while ignoring opposing viewpoints. However, in this case, it seems that selective deception is amplifying the bias.
Don’t take my word. Read the newspaper article and then read the actual study on which the article is based. I provide links so you can make up your own mind; the newspaper article did not.
Other Useful References
Below are some other useful publications from the U.S. Geological Survey which is part of the Department of the Interior.
USGS Subsidence home page. Contains dozens of useful publications on Texas Gulf Coast Groundwater and Land Subsidence, plus raw data in numerous formats.
Note: All thoughts in this post represent my opinions on matters of public interest and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP statute of the great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-26-at-12.33.30-AM-copy.jpg?fit=1500%2C715&ssl=17151500adminadmin2019-07-27 01:22:302019-07-27 02:27:17Truth is the First Casualty In Water Wars, Too
Judge Lauren Reeder of the 234th Judicial District Court has set the trial date in the Elm Grove/North Kingwood Forest flooding case for July 13, 2020.
The docket control order issued by Judge Reeder also lays out the general order of events in the case. On or before:
12/16/2019, all parties to the case must be added and served, a legal process called “joinder.” Inviters this case, more than 200 individual plaintiffs are suing the defendants. Interestingly, the defendants do not yet include the parent company, Perry Homes, or LJA Engineering Inc., the company that designed the development and its detention systems.
4/13/2020, all expert witnesses for parties seeking affirmative relief must be named.
5/13/2020, all other expert witnesses must be named.
6/12/2020, the court will hold a status conference to discuss discovery limitations and alternative dispute resolution (i.e., mediation). The discover period ends on 6/12. All pleadings, amendments and challenges to expert testimony must also be heard by this date.
On 6/29/20 at 1:30 pm, Judge Reeder has scheduled a docket call at which all parties to the case must be prepared to discuss every aspect of the case.
Judge Reeder also tentatively scheduled the trial for 7/13/2020.
Construction on the Woodridge Village development will continue during the pre-trial phase. This has some residents concerned. While the construction of detention ponds is encouraging, any flaws in the construction of the engineering plans will be set in concrete before the case goes to trial. If there are flaws, that could affect flooding for years to come.
Jeff Miller, an Elm Grove resident, reports that two more culverts have been added to Taylor Gulley where it bisects the northern and southern portions of Woodridge Village.
Posted by Bob Rehak on July 25, 2019 with help from Bill Fowlerand Jeff Miller
695 days after Hurricane Harvey
All thoughts expressed in this post represent my opinions on matters of public policy and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP statute of the great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Culverts.jpg?fit=1500%2C867&ssl=18671500adminadmin2019-07-25 14:06:432019-07-25 14:08:21Judge Sets July 2020 Trial Date in Flood Case
A CBS 60-Minutes segment last Sunday brought into focus many thoughts I have been struggling to articulate since Hurricane Harvey. The segment featured an interview with a Dutch flood expert named Henk Ovink. Mr. Ovink has some impressive credentials and consults with other countries and cities around the world. At a strategic level, he looks at America and scratches his strikingly bald head. You can sum up his observations in a paragraph.
America, he says, spends hundreds of billions of dollars to repair flood damage and restore communities to the way they were. The Dutch, he says, focus on re-imagining their cities to move structures and people out of harm’s way. The idea is to give floods more room to spread out rather than to confine them within dikes. Instead of incentivizing people with below-cost national flood insurance to build ever closer to danger areas, reward them for moving to safer places.
It’s not as if these are new ideas. We hear people talking about them ad nauseam – at conferences, on TV, in City Council chambers, in newspaper reports. Yet we never take action on them. As a result, homes and businesses flood repetitively. And people die. In contrast, no one has died in a Dutch flood since 1955, says Mr. Ovink.
This raises an obvious question.
What keeps us from adopting simple, low-cost, proven solutions?
The answer should be blindingly obvious, but isn’t … at least to Americans … and especially Texans, who believe in individual freedom and competition more than most.
If you take the time to watch Mr. Ovink’s other speeches and interviews on YouTube, you’ll get a hint. He talks a lot about the spirit of cooperation among the Dutch people. It’s not as if American’s don’t know how to cooperate. It’s that we don’t LIKE to cooperate – if there’s money to be made.
Cooperation Vs. Competition
From a sociological and psychological perspective, humans have two great survival strategies: cooperation and competition. You can see them built into our political fabric at every level, dating back to the U.S. Constitution. We built America on both. Fifty states work together to provide for things like a common defense. But we also have fifty states competing with each other for jobs, economic development, and the freedom to pursue different values.
The contradiction and tension between these two survival strategies defines the American mindset and American politics. Two local, recent examples:
Romerica is trying to build a 3.2 million square foot development in wetlands near the floodway of the San Jacinto West Fork. They know it’s not safe, but they can make money by buying up cheap flood plain land and then sell river views at a profit. Taxpayer-subsided flood insurance protects everyone. So why not?
In Montgomery County, a private water utility is fighting what it calls a “government monopoly” on the supply of water. QuadVest and Simon Sequeira want unlimited groundwater pumping to pump up their profits. They dispute the science that points to the subsidence it will generate, endangering other people’s property.
Lessons from the Pursuit of Loneliness
As I reflected on this, it reminded me of a book I read in 1970, The Pursuit of Loneliness by Phillip Slater. For a sociology book, it became a blockbuster success. It sold more than half a million copies, a monster number at the time.
The New York Times said in a review, “…the book explored the tension between the Lone Ranger individualist who occupies center stage in American myth and the communal interdependence that defines democracy in reality.”
The example I remember best from Slater’s book, which I read almost 50 years ago, concerned migration to suburbs and exurbs. For thousands of years, Slater said, to be civilized meant to be citified. We love all the benefits of living in a city (like jobs, shopping, cultural and sporting events), but our dream is a ranch far out in the country that lets us escape. So we buy it, then lobby to build an eight-lane divided highway to it. Use up two to three hours a day commuting. And pollute the air along the way. We wake up years later only to find that we have destroyed the very lifestyle we we fought so hard to attain.
The book is filled with contradictions like this. For instance, when connectedness brings us happiness, why do we work so hard to live in walled-off homes? I highly recommend it.
Group Vs. Individual
This conflict between cooperation and competition, independence and interdependence, defines the contradictions in our ambitions, politics and lifestyles. It’s what makes America and Texas so insanely great. It’s also one of the things that makes flood mitigation so difficult and expensive. Our belief in individual rights blinds us to the obvious. Maybe we should just give the river room to flood by turning that flood plain property into communal parks that everyone can enjoy. But who will give up their river view? Or the freedom to flood?
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/25/2019
695 Days since Hurricane Harvey
All thoughts expressed in this post are my opinions on matters of public policy. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP law of the great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Harvey.jpg?fit=1500%2C794&ssl=17941500adminadmin2019-07-25 00:46:232019-07-25 01:07:36Giving Rivers More Room: Who Wants to Give Up The Freedom to Flood?
Truth is the First Casualty In Water Wars, Too
Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright coined the phrase, “The first casualty in war is truth.” The same is true of water wars. In an attempt to justify unlimited groundwater pumping from the Jasper aquifer, a headline in a Montgomery County online newspaper trumpeted, “University Of Houston Study Shows No Linkage Between Deep Groundwater Production And Subsidence In Montgomery County.” But wait! Is that what the study really said? The article did not provide a link to the actual study. So how could you tell if the review was accurate? It’s not. Below are just a few of the reasons why.
Contradictions Between Study and Newspaper’s Summary
The UH study didn’t study Montgomery County. It looked only at Harris-Galveston Subsidence District Regulatory Areas 1 and 2. They cover only SOUTHERN Harris and Galveston counties! Researchers found no subsidence associated with the Jasper there. That’s because virtually no one pumps the Jasper there (See Jasper well location map below). The article’s anonymous author forgot to mention that though.
“Don’t Extrapolate Results,” But They Did
The UH study also carefully cautions readers not to extrapolate the results from the study area to other areas. But the newspaper did it and forgot to mention the caution also.
Newspaper Falsely Claims Study Suggests “No Subsidence”
The newspaper author claimed that the study “suggests that Montgomery County utilities, municipalities, homeowner’s associations, and other large-scale groundwater users could draw water production from the Jasper aquifer without causing any subsidence at the surface of Montgomery County.” The UH study makes no such suggestion.
Claimed “No Need for Regulation,” Contrary to UH Findings
The newspaper author goes on to claim that the study “also suggests that, as long as groundwater production comes from the Jasper or lower formations (such as the Upper Catahoula Formation), there is little need, if any, for any groundwater regulation whatsoever.” Again, the UH study makes no such suggestion.
Quite the contrary, the UH study says that regulation was effective in slowing the subsidence found in other aquifers along the gulf coast that were being depleted, such as the Evangeline and Chicot.
Newspaper Claim of 100% Annual Recharge Not Substantiated by Study
The newspaper author also says that, “Since the quantity of groundwater in Montgomery County is essentially unlimited, and since Montgomery County aquifers enjoy almost 100% recharge annually after production drawdowns have occurred, there would seem to be no reason whatsoever to regulate groundwater production from the Jasper aquifer and the Catahoula aquifer.” The study makes no mention of recharge rates in either of those aquifers.
Newspaper Implies “No Need for Regulation” but Study Says It Helped
Finally, the anonymous newspaper author concludes by saying, “The University of Houston study suggests that it’s time for the Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District to bring the entire over-regulation of groundwater to a crashing halt.” The study made no such recommendation.
Inferring that the UH scientists even implied that would require turning the the study’s findings on their head. Quite the contrary. The study explicitly states that regulations implemented in 1975 with the formation of the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District slowed out-of-control subsidence.
Newspaper Article Not Signed
Jumpin’ Jasper! What’s going on here? Who wrote this unsigned article? Was it someone who stands to profit financially from pumping the Jasper dry?
Why Water Not Pumped From Southern Part of Jasper
For the record, the Jasper dips toward the coast along a roughly north-to-south axis. The Jasper aquifer contains fresh water in Montgomery County and northern Harris County. But south of that, it becomes brackish. The water is too salty to use. That’s a big reason why virtually no one pumps it in the southern part of the region.
The down-dip part of the Jasper toward the coast also goes very deep. At the southern limit of freshwater, depth ranges to thousands of feet in places (see bottom of colored area below). Why would you drill that deep if you could get fresher water from aquifers like the Chicot and Evangeline much closer to the surface?
Subsidence Already Noted in Northern Part of Jasper
Those are the reasons why the UH scholars do not associate subsidence with the Jasper in southern Harris and Montgomery Counties. That does NOT mean subsidence won’t happen in other areas where utilities DO pump the Jasper. It already has.
However, USGS well-water height readings north of Highway 99 show severe drawdown near the population centers in southern Montgomery and northern Harris Counties. And surprise, surprise! That also happens to be the area where most subsidence has occurred in Montgomery County.
Unsustainable Pumping Rates
While the advocates of unlimited groundwater pumping want you to believe that the aquifer recharge rates in Montgomery County equal the drawdown rate, they don’t. The Jasper aquifer is being drawn down in populated places at more than 10 FEET per year (see graph below). But USGS estimates that the recharge rate for the Jasper is as little as ONE-TENTH of an INCH per year. That means some utilities have been using up Jasper water 1200 times faster than nature replaces it.
Truth or Consequences
Ground level declines produce fault movement and subsidence. They translate to infrastructure damage and flooding.
As water levels decline, water wells begin to have problems producing. They lose “yield,” which means they can’t produce as much water in a given time period. This requires the wells to run longer to meet demand. It costs more to lift water. Longer run times increase maintenance costs. Pumps have to be lowered. The motors have to be upsized, which requires electrical rewiring.
Some well pumps can’t be lowered any farther, which may mean abandoning and replacing the well. Some water level decline is expected. But those who argue that Montgomery County has an unlimited supply of water are just ludicrous. The harder you pump, the more decline you get, and with that comes all the consequences of declines.
Why People Want to Believe the Unbelievable
Montgomery County residents have found the change from well to surface water financially difficult. People WANT to believe that unlimited groundwater pumping is safe. I just hope they don’t wind up putting all their water lillies in one pond, so to speak.
The only thing worse than expensive water is no water. Or no water plus infrastructure damaged by subsidence.
Selective Perception Amplified by Selective Deception
Selective perception is a well known cognitive bias. It describes the process by which people perceive what they want to in media messages while ignoring opposing viewpoints. However, in this case, it seems that selective deception is amplifying the bias.
Don’t take my word. Read the newspaper article and then read the actual study on which the article is based. I provide links so you can make up your own mind; the newspaper article did not.
Other Useful References
Below are some other useful publications from the U.S. Geological Survey which is part of the Department of the Interior.
USGS Subsidence home page. Contains dozens of useful publications on Texas Gulf Coast Groundwater and Land Subsidence, plus raw data in numerous formats.
Hydrogeology and Simulation of Ground-Water Flow and Land-Surface Subsidence in the Northern Part of the Gulf Coast Aquifer System, Texas By Mark C. Kasmarek and James L. Robinson, 2004
Groundwater Withdrawals 1976, 1990, and 2000–10 and Land-Surface-Elevation Changes 2000–10 in Harris, Galveston, Fort Bend, Montgomery, and Brazoria Counties, Texas, Scientific Investigations Report 2013–5034, By Mark C. Kasmarek and Michaela R. Johnson
Land Surface Subsidence in Harris County between 1915 and 2001.
Water-Level Altitudes 2016 and Water-Level Changes in the Chicot, Evangeline, and Jasper Aquifers and Compaction 1973–2015 in the Chicot and Evangeline Aquifers, Houston-Galveston Region, Texas, Scientific Investigations Report 2013–5034, U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey
Evaluation of Ground-Water Flow and Land-Surface Subsidence Caused by Hypothetical
Withdrawals in the Northern Part of the Gulf Coast Aquifer System, Texas, Scientific Investigations Report 2005–5024, U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey by Mark C. Kasmarek, Brian D. Reece, and Natalie A. Houston
Also, don’t forget to check out the subsidence tab under the Reports page of this web site.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/27/2019
697 Days after Hurricane Harvey
“Is There Deep-Seated Subsidence in the Houston-Galveston Area?” by Jiangbo Yu, Guoquan Wang, Timothy J. Kearns, and Linqiang Yang, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, National Center for Airborne LiDAR Mapping, 312 Science & Research Building 1, Room 312, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5007, USA. Copyright © 2014 Jiangbo Yu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Hindawi Publishing Corporation, International Journal of Geophysics, Volume 2014, Article ID 942834, 11 pages.
Note: All thoughts in this post represent my opinions on matters of public interest and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP statute of the great State of Texas.
Judge Sets July 2020 Trial Date in Flood Case
Judge Lauren Reeder of the 234th Judicial District Court has set the trial date in the Elm Grove/North Kingwood Forest flooding case for July 13, 2020.
Background of Case
On May 7th of this year, heavy rains fell on 268 acres that had been clear cut by subsidiaries of Perry Homes (PSWA, Inc. and Figure Four Partners LTD.) and their contractors. Contractors working on the new development, Woodridge Forest, had not yet installed detention ponds to control the runoff. Approximately 200 homes flooded during the rain event.
Video shows that much of the water flowed down streets near Taylor Gully instead of flowing into the gully itself at a controlled rate as it should have. The defendants blamed the flooding on God. But the hydrology report prepared by LJA Engineering showed that the detention ponds in the development should have held more than a foot of rain, far more than actually fell that day. One issue in the case may be whether the developer acted negligently by clearcutting so much acreage before installing adequate detention.
Schedule Between Now and Trial Date
The docket control order issued by Judge Reeder also lays out the general order of events in the case. On or before:
On 6/29/20 at 1:30 pm, Judge Reeder has scheduled a docket call at which all parties to the case must be prepared to discuss every aspect of the case.
Judge Reeder also tentatively scheduled the trial for 7/13/2020.
To see the entire original docket order, click here.
Woodridge Village Construction Continues
Construction on the Woodridge Village development will continue during the pre-trial phase. This has some residents concerned. While the construction of detention ponds is encouraging, any flaws in the construction of the engineering plans will be set in concrete before the case goes to trial. If there are flaws, that could affect flooding for years to come.
Jeff Miller, an Elm Grove resident, reports that two more culverts have been added to Taylor Gulley where it bisects the northern and southern portions of Woodridge Village.
Posted by Bob Rehak on July 25, 2019 with help from Bill Fowler and Jeff Miller
695 days after Hurricane Harvey
All thoughts expressed in this post represent my opinions on matters of public policy and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP statute of the great State of Texas.
Giving Rivers More Room: Who Wants to Give Up The Freedom to Flood?
A CBS 60-Minutes segment last Sunday brought into focus many thoughts I have been struggling to articulate since Hurricane Harvey. The segment featured an interview with a Dutch flood expert named Henk Ovink. Mr. Ovink has some impressive credentials and consults with other countries and cities around the world. At a strategic level, he looks at America and scratches his strikingly bald head. You can sum up his observations in a paragraph.
Simple Flooding Solution: Reimagine, Don’t Replace
Unfortunately, the 60-minutes segment is behind a pay wall. If you’re not a subscriber already, you can see many of the same thoughts in this 10-minute interview he did with the Canadian Broadcasting Company right after Hurricane Harvey and other massive floods in 2017.
Why Change is So Difficult
It’s not as if these are new ideas. We hear people talking about them ad nauseam – at conferences, on TV, in City Council chambers, in newspaper reports. Yet we never take action on them. As a result, homes and businesses flood repetitively. And people die. In contrast, no one has died in a Dutch flood since 1955, says Mr. Ovink.
This raises an obvious question.
The answer should be blindingly obvious, but isn’t … at least to Americans … and especially Texans, who believe in individual freedom and competition more than most.
If you take the time to watch Mr. Ovink’s other speeches and interviews on YouTube, you’ll get a hint. He talks a lot about the spirit of cooperation among the Dutch people. It’s not as if American’s don’t know how to cooperate. It’s that we don’t LIKE to cooperate – if there’s money to be made.
Cooperation Vs. Competition
From a sociological and psychological perspective, humans have two great survival strategies: cooperation and competition. You can see them built into our political fabric at every level, dating back to the U.S. Constitution. We built America on both. Fifty states work together to provide for things like a common defense. But we also have fifty states competing with each other for jobs, economic development, and the freedom to pursue different values.
The contradiction and tension between these two survival strategies defines the American mindset and American politics. Two local, recent examples:
Lessons from the Pursuit of Loneliness
As I reflected on this, it reminded me of a book I read in 1970, The Pursuit of Loneliness by Phillip Slater. For a sociology book, it became a blockbuster success. It sold more than half a million copies, a monster number at the time.
The example I remember best from Slater’s book, which I read almost 50 years ago, concerned migration to suburbs and exurbs. For thousands of years, Slater said, to be civilized meant to be citified. We love all the benefits of living in a city (like jobs, shopping, cultural and sporting events), but our dream is a ranch far out in the country that lets us escape. So we buy it, then lobby to build an eight-lane divided highway to it. Use up two to three hours a day commuting. And pollute the air along the way. We wake up years later only to find that we have destroyed the very lifestyle we we fought so hard to attain.
The book is filled with contradictions like this. For instance, when connectedness brings us happiness, why do we work so hard to live in walled-off homes? I highly recommend it.
Group Vs. Individual
This conflict between cooperation and competition, independence and interdependence, defines the contradictions in our ambitions, politics and lifestyles. It’s what makes America and Texas so insanely great. It’s also one of the things that makes flood mitigation so difficult and expensive. Our belief in individual rights blinds us to the obvious. Maybe we should just give the river room to flood by turning that flood plain property into communal parks that everyone can enjoy. But who will give up their river view? Or the freedom to flood?
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/25/2019
695 Days since Hurricane Harvey
All thoughts expressed in this post are my opinions on matters of public policy. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP law of the great State of Texas.